Hotmail co-founder starts new dotcom venture

Spends less than $10 million of his fortune

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Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has launched his biggest private dotcom venture. The man who made $400 million selling the internet email service to Microsoft has spent less than $10 million of his own money on Arzoo.com - a business which will fix IT problems over the Web using software professionals based in the US and India.

ISP, Affinity Internet Holdings, reported an increased turnover of £4.55 million today, compared with £960,000 for the same six month period to June last year. Gross loss inched up from £1.1 million last year to £1.8 this year. Group operating losses were also up, from £1.72 million to £7 million thanks to the growth of the company. Interconnect revenues accounted for were 70 per cent (£3.2 million) of the total group revenues for the period. Affinity has cash reserves of £12.5 million.

Trafficmaster, the traffic information group, launched an online service today. The company claims that the market is 'hotting up' and sales will treble next year.

Orchestream, which develops and licences software to Internet protocol network providers, posted first-half revenues of £576,823 for the period to June 30. It said it will have sales of £15 million in 2001 and become profitable in 2002. ®